Dr Ruth Evans - University of Reading

Staff Profile:Dr Ruth Evans

Name:

Dr Ruth Evans

Job Title:

Associate Professor

Responsibilities:

Geography Undergraduate Admissions Tutor
Undergraduate Teaching: Culture and Development in Africa,Culture, Identity and Place

Areas of Interest:

Gendered life transitions, bereavement and inheritance
Land politics, food security and chronic poverty in West Africa
Sibling relationships and child- and youth-headed households in East Africa
Geographies of care and family relations, especially young people's care work for disabled family members and those living with HIV and chronic illness
Childhood, care and migration in the UK
Social exclusion/ inclusion and the participation of marginalised groups in research and policy
Geographies of Children, Youth and Families

Postgraduate Supervision:

Ruth currently supervises research students in the field of geographies of care, disability and family relationships:

Agnes Atim: The participation of people living with HIV in healthcare in the post-conflict transition in northern Uganda.
Yaw Adjei-Amoako: Mainstreaming disability and development: the challenges and opportunities in Ghana.
Caroline Day: Growing up caring: the life transitions of young people caring for parents or relatives in Zambia.
Gary Downing: Negotiating socio-sexual networks and youth transitions disabled young people.
Gudbjörg Ottósdóttir: Care and disability in refugee families in the South-East of England.
Phoebe Foy-Phillips: Cultures of young parenting, gendered identities and rurality

Research groups / Centres:

Key facts:

Ruth's research focuses on gendered and generational inequalities in access to resources, caring relations, and social vulnerabilities experienced by children, youth and families, particularly those affected by bereavement, chronic illness, HIV and disability. She is currently leading a Leverhulme Trust-funded project, Death in the Family in Urban Senegal: bereavement, care and family relations. Find out more about the project here. She is also leading a collaborative research project on Access to land, food security and the intergenerational transmission of poverty in the Brong Ahafo region of Ghana (2012-14). Recent research has focused on Inheritance, access to resources and family relations in Senegal (2011-12) and Palm Oil, Land Rights and Ecosystems Services in Liberia (2012-13) (reports are available on Centaur below).

Ruth also completed a study on stigma, gender and generational inequalities in asset inheritance and the intergenerational transmission of poverty in Tanzania and Uganda (with Caroline Day), funded by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre. Read more about the project and download the 2011 CPRC Working Paper.

From 2008-2010, Ruth conducted a qualitative, participatory study of young people's caring responsibilities for their siblings within child- and youth- headed households in Tanzania and Uganda, funded by the RGS-IBG and the University of Reading (2008-10). (See the Research Report and articles below).

Recently published articles focus on sibling caringscapes and life transitions (Geoforum, 2012; Area, 2011), and safeguarding inherited assets and enhancing the resilience of young people living in child- and youth-headed households in Tanzania and Uganda (African Journal of AIDS Research, 2012), care, disability and HIV in Africa (with Agnes Atim, Third World Quarterly, 2011), caring relations in African migrant families in the UK (Population, Space and Place, 2011), young people's caring roles and responsibilities within the family in Africa (Geography Compass, 2010) and emotional geographies and an ethics of care within families affected by HIV (with Felicity Thomas) (Emotions, Space and Society, 2009).

Her book (co-authored with Prof. Saul Becker, 2009, The Policy Press), Children Caring for Parents with HIV and AIDS: Global Issues and Policy Responses draws on findings from an ESRC study of the experiences of children caring for parents and relatives with HIV in Tanzania and the UK. For more information about the research, read the news article: Children caring for parents with HIV and AIDS or download the Stakeholder Report (PDF 1652KB) and Executive Summary (PDF 539KB).

Previous research in Tanzania explored the gendered 'street careers' of young people and the impacts of HIV and AIDS on children and families. In the UK, Ruth's research has also investigated the social exclusion/ inclusion of children and their participation in policy initiatives.